Magic Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Prerelease Information

Nick Nazar 26 Feb 01, 2026

Cowabunga dude! This spring, turtle power comes to Magic: the Gathering. That's right - four brothers, some freaky green ooze, and their rat mentor are now a part of the Magic: the Gathering Universes Beyond! Enjoy a sneak peak at the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles set during Prerelease Weekend, February 27 - March 1! For a full rundown of how our prerelease events work read on.

TMNT Prerelease Information

Never played at a prerelease before? No problem! We'll be hosting six different prerelease events during our Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles prerelease weekend of February 27 - March 1. If you need more information, just keep reading this blog post. We've got a quick rundown of how our prerelease events work, some helpful tips and reminders for you below, and links to all of our events and preorder information to boot.

Sealed Prerelease Events

Each event will consist of a sealed event of some variety (regular or 2 Headed Giant), and last 3-4 rounds of play. More on that just a bit further down. If you’d rather draft a prerelease, we have you covered the Tuesday after!

Bonus Draft Prerelease Event!

Flight 7 - Tuesday, March 3 at 6:30 PM (this link will go live Wednesday, February 25 at 11 AM)

Regional Championship Qualifier Limited Event!

Got a little competitive spark? Want to take the leap towards Magic greatness? We've got your first step, a sealed 2-slot qualifier, just a couple of weeks after the set goes live.

2-Slot RCQ - Saturday, March 14 at 11 AM (this link will go live Monday, March 1 at 11 AM)

As soon as we open on Friday, January 16, we'll have the entire product suite available for you! And that’s not all - we’ll also be able to sell individual packs, including play and collector boosters, alongside bundles, commander decks…basically anything you could ask for to help you stir up trouble.

Preparing for a Prerelease at Phoenix

Once you've preregistered for your event(s) of choice, there's a small checklist of things to do before prerelease weekend rolls along. If you're planning to play at one of the in-person events, here's what you'll need to be aware of:

Food and Non-alcoholic drinks are allowed inside, so consider bringing a snack and water bottle in case you get hungry between rounds (we will also have sodas and snacks available for purchase).
Optional, but highly recommended: Download the Magic Companion app to your phone or tablet.
Optional, but highly recommended: Make sure you have a login setup with the MTG Companion App (if you play Arena, these login credentials are the same for both game and app).

What to do during Prerelease Weekend

If you're playing in one of our in-person events, just make sure you arrive at the store before the event's start time. We recommend aiming for about 30-45 minutes prior to the event to make sure you can get checked in, find a seat, and get comfortable in the space. You can do some trading, or pick up some sleeves or what have you, and it's way easier if you do that ahead of start time rather than during deck construction.

The Prerelease "How to"

All of our Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles prerelease events will be a sealed (or limited) format events. That means you'll be given 6 play boosters of TMNT and a foil bonus rare inside of your prerelease kit. We'll give you about 45 minutes to open those packs, sort them, and build deck out of the contents inside. Here are all the deck building requirements:

Minimum Deck Size is 40 cards
You may use the contents of your prerelease booster packs (plus the bonus rare) to build your deck.
Aside from basic land, you may only use whatever is in your prerelease kit to build with. (No trading with other players or combining multiple pools, please).
There's no cap on the number of cards of the same name you can have in the deck (ex: if you open 5 of the same card, you can use all 5 if you want).
You may adjust your deck between games or matches. If you're just not doing well with what you built, maybe try a different combination of colors!

Once you've got your deck built, set the rest of your card pool aside until the end of the event. Don't trade anything away yet, cause those leftover cards will be your sideboard.

Prerelease Prize Support

All of our prerelease events are run with an eye towards having the best possible time, learning, and trying out new ideas and strategies that come from every new set. So with that in mind, we stick to a simple pack-per-win prize structure that looks a little like this:

4 Wins - 4 Packs
3 Wins - 3 Packs
2 Wins - 2 Packs
0 / 1 Win - 1 Pack

With the exception of the Friday at 3 PM event, each event will have a maximum of 4 rounds. All prizes will be awarded to players in the form of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles play boosters once they've finished with the event. Only play 2 rounds and need to drop? No problem! Just let us know you're leaving and we'll give you whatever prizes are owed at that point.

Because the 3 PM Friday event will be constrained to 3 rounds in order to make sure that the 7:30 PM event can start on time, it will have a similar prize structure to the one listed above, but adjusted slightly. In order to accommodate the missing round, the final round of the event will count for 2 boosters (so you can still win as many as four packs if you 3-0 the Friday event).

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Mechanics

One of the best ways to prepare yourself for prerelease is to get familiar with the mechanics of the set. TMNT gives us two brand new mechanics that let us sneak spells and creatures into play and mutate our creatures to make them stronger!

Sneak

Ninjas are masters of stealth, an ability reflected in the form of the Sneak mechanic. Sneak is an alternative casting cost for a spell that can only be used during a very specific part of the attack step - when blockers are declared. Once blockers are declared, you can cast a spell for its sneak cost by returning an unblocked attacker you control to its owner's hand. If the spell you're sneaking out is a creature, that creature enters tapped and attacking. Sneak also overrides timing restrictions, meaning that you can sneak out a sorcery during combat if it has this ability!

Mutagen Tokens

The turtles wouldn't be nearly as famous (or large, or talking, or intelligent) without a little exposure to some mutagen. Many cards in this set product mutagen tokens. These tokens are artifacts that have the ability "{1}, Tap, Sacrifice this Token: Put a +1/+1 counter on target creature. Activate only as a sorcery." Mutate your creatures. Mutate your friend's creatures. Mutate your opponents creatures! (on second thought maybe don't do that).

Reminders and Returning Mechanics

There are a number of returning mechanics in TMNT, but we wanted to take a moment to call attention to just a couple of them that haven't recurred in a minute, and one rules reminder that's super relevant in a set based on just four green dudes.

Legend Rule Reminder - Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles pays homage to the different eras and iterations of the iconic turtles over the years with various cards. As a result, there are a number of legendary creatures with similar names in this set. So just to make sure everyone is on the same page, a quick reminder that the legend rule only applies to legendary creatures with the exact same name. Michelangelo, Improviser and Michelangelo, Weirdness to 11 are two distinct cards in the eyes of the game, even if they are the same character in the comics.

Classes - Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles gives us a number of new class enchantments! These enchantments can be leveled up as a sorcery during your main phase to unlock cool new powers and abilities. Not to be confused with Sagas, which also appear in this set!

TMNT Prerelease FAQ

Here's a few commonly asked questions about prerelease events and in-store play events. If your question isn't on this list, please don't hesitate to reach out to us at the store! We're happy to answer any questions you might have.

Q: How well do I have to know Magic to play at a prerelease?

A: Not that well really! We ask that you have a working knowledge of the game (i.e., you know how to play, and no one's going to need to explain turn order or any of the basics), but beyond that we'll do our best to accommodate any and all skill levels. Prerelease events are a fun and casual environment, and if you're having a tough time with something we'll have a judge or tournament organizer available to help you through it.

Q: What should I bring with me to the event?

A: Here's a short checklist of items that are either required or good to have:

Optional but recommended: A well fitted mask to wear while at the tables.
A water bottle and energy bar or dry-snack (it's a good idea to have something if you're hungry and a round goes long).
Sleeves ( Strongly recommended for this event!) and a deck box (you also can buy these at the shop if you forget them)

Q: Should I preregister for the event?

A: If you're able to, yes absolutely! Preregistration locks in your spot at the event. The last thing you need or want is to show up on the day of and find out we sold out the night before (which is a thing that has happened in the past).

Q: If I preregister and can't make the event, what happens?

A: That depends on you! In the event you aren't able to make it to the event, please contact us to request a refund as early as possible. Refunds requested more than 48 hours in advance of the event can just be cancelled and refunded back to the card they were purchased with. Refunds requested inside the 48 hour window will be refunded back to store credit.

Q: Oops! I registered and forgot to show. What happens now?

A: That's okay! Your registration fee will just get refunded back to you in the form of store credit. We typically do this around the week following the prerelease weekend.

Q: What if I need to swap from one event to the other, can I do that?

A: Sure! As long as there's still a spot at the event you want to swap to, yes definitely. Please email us (or contact us through the contact page of our website) and we'll get right on it. Please don't call - we need an email or contact form so that we have a record of when the request was made.

Q: I've never built a deck for limited before. Any pointers?

A: We've got a few! Here's a short list of handy tips when building a limited / sealed deck:

Stick to 40 cards! That's roughly 23 spells and creatures + 17 land. Those numbers will shift a little bit depending on what you open, but broadly that's where you should aim to be.
Play the colors that let you play your best cards.
Don't be afraid to experiment! You can switch your deck around between rounds and between games. Every card you're not actively using in your deck is part of your sideboard, so if one color combo just isn't working for you, maybe wait until the match is over and try swapping it around.
It's okay to ask for help from other players. This is a prerelease; we're here to have fun and enjoy the new set. You'll often find that we've got several players at each prerelease that enjoy helping and mentoring newer players through the deck building process.

Q: Any other advice on getting ready for a prerelease?

A: Yup! If you can, try to familiarize yourself with the set ahead of time. Keep an eye out for spoilers! By the time you're reading this, spoiler season will already have started and you can bet that there's a few really cool looking cards and mechanics out there that need reading up on.

Q: Where's the best place to park for a prerelease event?

A: If you're not familiar with Capitol Hill, you should know that parking is at a premium. If you're planning to drive to us for one of our events, we recommend either parking at the paid lot at Harvard & Pine, or parking at one of the park & rides along the light rail route and taking the light rail into the Capitol Hill stop. We're just across the street.

Having said all of that - if you're in a hurry and need to find parking right away, our neighbor, Dick's Drive-In, has now allocated a small number of parking spaces along the wall of our building as paid parking. You'll need to download the pay-by-phone app to get started, and instructions are available next to each paid parking space.

And that's it for our Magic Presents Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Prerelease Guide! We hope you found this informative and helpful, and we hope to see you at one of our many prerelease events!